How to use code completion in BBedit?

Question

This is driving me nuts. I've just downloaded BBedit, which comes with 'text completion'. I've checked that it is turned on in Preferences.

I'm writing a CSS file. I start to type in 'text-transformation' and as expected it suggests 'text-transformation'. So it completes the property. But then if I start to type the value 'uppercase', it just says 'no completions available'.

Another example, if I start to write 'vertical-align' it will complete the property, but then not suggest the values that this property can have. So I start to write 'top', it suggests 'top' I double click on the suggestion and it adds "top: <##>' to 'vertical-align:'. It is treating 'top' as a property.

So basically BBedit can suggest and automatically complete properties, but not suggest (relevant) values or complete values?

Answer 1

I have corresponded directly with BBedit. Here is their reply:

"BBEdit does not currently offer direct property value completions.

You can instead invoke its CSS editing tools to attain the same end. Type to enter the property, then invoke the Markup -> Edit Markup command (Command-Control-M) to open the appropriate CSS tools dialog, select the desired value, and apply same to insert it."

This is a very long winded way to acheive what Brackets and Sublime etc can do automatically.

Answer 2

For those who would find this page when auto-completion stopped working, it is worth mentioning that BBEdit reportedly stops auto-completion when the document exceeds a certain size. This limit can be removed by opening a terminal on your Mac and typing the command:

defaults write com.barebones.bbedit MaxDocumentLengthForCompletionTokenizer -int 0

This works at least for version 14.6.6 of BBEdit.

See BBEdit documentation for more information.